A technique to think about theatre is as a residing bridge between the previous and the current: It’s by definition all the time occurring proper now, nevertheless it has been rehearsed, constructed, premeditated, with phrases and actions that had been scripted wherever from weeks to centuries earlier than the second of its efficiency. We see what’s unfolding in entrance of us however can all the time sense what’s behind (and earlier than) it.
What does theatre should say to the long run? There may be as but no crystal ball out there in any medium however our creativeness, in fact. However to the extent {that a} staged actuality can awaken new prospects for residing and feeling, and forge recent relationships amongst its makers and its viewers, theatre can’t solely present us a glimpse of our future; it could actually, in an actual sense, assist us to construct it.
Theatre doesn’t all the time dwell as much as that forward-looking potential, both in its content material or within the circumstances of its creation. It’s not for lack of expertise or imaginative and prescient: There are numerous considerate, thrillingly proficient artists, craftspeople and leaders working in and round this business and artwork type, whose path-breaking work I see proof of day-after-day. However like each different human endeavor, particularly those who exist at any scale inside a bigger economic system, theatre faces each materials obstacles and existential threats to its flourishing. The previous 4 years of pandemic and protest have challenged the theatre like few different intervals in its historical past.
However in disaster there may be additionally alternative, and it’s partly in that spirit that we’re proud to launch our Theatre Futures venture on this situation. With the help of the Ford Basis, we’ve requested 16 main thinkers to offer us their “if I ran the theatre” speeches, with outcomes as provocative and mind-opening as we’d have hoped. The primary 4 Futures essays seem on this situation, and the remaining will roll out on-line all through the remainder of 2024. It’s our hope that these writings will likely be a kind of playbook of greatest practices for constructing and sustaining a greater theatre ecology in and for a modified and altering world.
The surface world isn’t actually outdoors, in any case. As we watch a horrifying struggle on Gaza by which we People are intimately complicit, as we sweat rising authoritarianism worldwide amid a fraught U.S. election yr, as we witness the cumulative devastations of local weather change—we’re mistaken if we predict that the theatre doorways defend or safe us from these compounding crises. Certainly to proceed to collect to make that means despite the world’s brutalities is to not acquiesce to them however to face them down. Because the Palestinian author Maya Nazzal writes in her reflection on Golden Threads Productions’ staging of Returning to Haifa, on this situation, “Resistance is gorgeous. Irrespective of the place Palestinians find yourself on the globe, no matter area we’re in, our work, our survival, and our pleasure are a type of resistance in themselves.”
This situation doesn’t solely look forward: This yr is the fortieth anniversary of American Theatre. Wanting again over 4 many years of the journal, it’s neither our personal longevity, nor the adjustments in our design and emphasis, which can be most spectacular or noteworthy. No, what stands out are the cussed resilience and countless number of the artwork type we’ve been privileged to cowl. Theatre, that Fabulous Invalid, has weathered arduous years earlier than. As we glance round and forward at extra arduous years, we are able to take consolation and inspiration from the phrases of Brecht: “At nighttime instances, will there even be singing? Sure, there may even be singing in regards to the darkish instances.”
Rob Weinert-Kendt is editor-in-chief of American Theatre.
